Jared Diamond has been traveling
to New Guinea since 1964 to study birds, and as a result has learned a lot
about the ways people of traditional societies think. Drawing on his own
experience and that of anthropologists working all around the planet, Diamond
compares these societies to modern industrialized states. Diamond identifies things
that we in the Western world could learn from traditional peoples, and he also
delineates ways in which life is better in our advanced societies (mostly
issues of safety and violence). Perhaps his main message is that we should
think of cultural diversity as thousands of experiments by human beings to meet
the common challenges of life: child rearing, old age, conflict resolution,
war, dealing with dangers, and staying healthy.

What made me think of
Krishnamurti’s quote was this passage:

A recurring theme is that the
other Westerners and I are struck by the emotional security, self-confidence,
curiosity, and autonomy of members of small-scale societies, not only as adults
but already as children…The Westerners who have lived with hunter-gatherers and
other small-scale societies speculate that these admirable qualities develop
because of the way in which their children are brought up: namely, with
constant security and stimulation as a result of the long nursing period,
sleeping near parents for several years, far more social models available to
children through allo-parenting [caretaking by other members of the group], far
more social stimulation through constant physical contact and proximity of
caretakers, instant caretaker responses to a child’s crying, and the minimal
amount of physical punishment.

As Diamond points out, basically
all psychological studies have been done with members of what he calls WEIRD
societies—western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic—and with privileged
members of those societies (college students). This does make you wonder
whether many of the theories of psychological development are really only
relevant to WEIRD cultures.

In addition, it makes you think
that maybe the reason why so many Westerners are neurotic, insecure, depressed,
anxious, etc. is not because there is something wrong with them. Perhaps their inability to find mental health is caused by
living in a profoundly sick culture that deprives its citizens of some of the most
basic human needs, like security, social interaction, and stimulation.

Diamond mentions some children
of missionaries who were raised in the traditional societies, then were sent to
a WEIRD country for schooling, and how difficult a time they had. One girl
talked about how she had loved the freedom of being able to run into any home
in the New Guinean village, and eat with any family on any particular day, and what
a shock it was to learn that this was not normal behavior in the West. Diamond
writes,

The children tell me that their
biggest adjustment problem is to deal with and adopt the West’s selfish
individualistic ways, and to shed the emphasis on cooperation and sharing that
they have learned among New Guinea children. They describe being ashamed of
themselves if they play competitive games in order to win, or if they try to
excel in school, or if they seek an advantage or opportunity that their
comrades don’t achieve.

One of these children of
missionaries, Sabine Kuegler, wrote a book about her experiences in New Guinea,
Child
of the Jungle: The True Story of a Girl Caught Between Two Worlds. I
haven’t read it (yet), but Diamond recommends it as an excellent account of the
culture shock that is experienced when someone moves from a traditional society
to the WEIRD world. There may be more physical comforts in the WEIRD world, but
there is more psychological and emotional health in the traditional world.

Friday, March 14, 2014

When I moved to a small city a
few years ago, after living for twenty years in a very small town, I noticed I
felt an upsurge in creativity. I had been living in an isolated mountain valley
and believed the peace and quiet were conducive to creativity, so this feeling
surprised me. It was if I could feel the energy of the people around me. I thought
maybe it was specific to the city I had moved to, which is a creative place,
but after reading an interesting article in the February 2014 National Geographic I’ve changed my
mind.

“Karma of the Crowd,” by Laura
Spinney, is about the beneficial aspects of being around large groups of
people, and uses as an example the large annual religious festival in India
called Maha Kumbh Mela. I’ve always heard of the negative effects of crowds like
mob mentality, but as Spinney writes,

There’s an energy coming off
this crowd, a sense that it amounts to more than the sum of its parts. The
French 19th century sociologist Emile Durkheim coined a phrase for
it: collective effervescence. He was convinced it had a positive impact on
individuals’ health. His ideas were sidelined during the mass violence of the
20th century, but perhaps he was on to something. Have crowds been
misunderstood?

In the West there’s a pervasive
idea that when people congregate, they surrender their individual identity,
along with their ability to reason and behave morally—some of the very
qualities that make us human.

“What our research shows is
that, actually, crowds are critical to society,” says psychologist Stephen
Reicher of the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. “They help form
our sense of who we are, they help form our relations to others, they even help
determine our physical well-being.”

About Me

I'm a philosopher, writer, videographer, and entrepreneur. In 2013 I've released a new book, "We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity." I'm the co-author with my husband Arthur Hancock of "The Game of God: Recovering Your True Identity.